Rem gave an empty smile.If being a shifter would make my injuries heal faster, then screw it, I'll become one right now. Don't know if I can even go back to Ashmire after all of this and just live happily like I don't know things. My mind feels tainted…
Blood and dirt now mixed inside the water pale; she was clean.
Nia said, “I tried to get it out of your hair, but that needs to be washed soon. Your wounds will swell, too, but we can fix that when we get to Scarlet. For now, just try and take it easy. Maybe lie down.”
Rem nodded, although didn’t feel like lying down. She had tried it when they first got back, but nearly jumped out of her skin when Nia came over to check on her. She was too on edge to let her mind sink into the dirt.
Rem's gaze wandered over to the captured hunter as he rested against a tree. Leather straps bound his wrists and blood crusted a swollen eye. His clothes were all black, made of hide and cloth. It was the same shithead that she nearly shot.
An idea crossed her mind.
"Nia, can I go talk to the hunter?" Rem asked without breaking her gaze.
"I—" Nia began, surprised at the request. "That’s not for me to decide.”
"I guess I can go talk to him, and someone can tell me if they don't allow it,” Rem suggested.
The idea of going to him, free and unbound, while he rested against that tree filled her heart with a sense of purpose that nothing else did.I really am turning into one of them.What else was she to do? A part of her was aware that her sanity was slipping. She had never been prepared to handle any of this.
She had to look out for her own skin in this world, it seemed.
Rem stood, groaning, her bodysore. Nia protested, glancing around as if she’d get in trouble, but Rem was willing to suffer the full punishment, and limped over. A few guards surrounded the hunter, one of them turning around to reveal Deacon. Rem paused when they made eye contact.
"Well, you've seen better days," Deacon said, grinning at Rem.
"I want to talk to the hunter," Rem insisted, ignoring his comment.
The other shifters eyed her, and she didn't recognize any of them as translators. Nia followed, although kept her distance and gaze on the ground.
"Go right ahead,” Deacon said.
She had nothing private to discuss but still didn't like Deacon listening in, wondering why Ronan even allowed him to come. Then again, Ronan didn't know that Deacon was her originalcaptor. She was too tired to argue and walked forward to the hunter who eyed her up and down.
"Bet this makes you happy to see me like this,” the hunter croaked, his voice ragged, and he could only move his neck and head. His glare was so sharp that it could cut right through her. He looked as bad as she felt. "Look at you, getting your injuries all fixed, walking among them like you're one of them. It pains my soul to know my brothers died for a shit like you. You should've ended me when you had the chance. Now I have to deal with this shit."
Rem bore her gaze into him. "Well, killing you would mean we can’t have this conversation… And I’m eager to hear what you have to say.”
"What do you want?" he bemoaned, staring down at his broken ankles.
Once she began speaking, it all spilled out. "Why are the Crowley Hunters targeting me? No matter how much I think it through, none of this makes any sense. I've never known hunters to target Silvers… I was a Silver for two months and not a soul showed up to check on me. I mean, they were even coming to take me south for protection before I was,”— her throat seized and she corrected herself— “before the shifters told me of the opportunity with them,” she said through tight lips.
She thought of Hugo, who had been the only man she was intimate with—a hunter two years older than her. Would he truly hunt and injure human women just because they were a Silver? Certainly, he wouldn’t. So then, why would the others?
The hunter pressed his head back into the tree and shrugged his shoulders. His voice was hoarse, like he was parched. "Cause you're a Silver, like I said earlier."
She rolled her eyes. "No,explain. Obviously, it's because I am a Silver. Why did you mention taking me as a hound? Why would a Silver be useful to humans? And what’s a hound? There's more of Silvers throughout these packs. Why, out of all of them, did you huntmedown?"
"Why should I bother telling you anything?" He snorted, spitting out a white glob into the grass.
Whereas Rem might once have recoiled at such a coarseness, she merely stared at him. It just didn't faze her like before. "Because I am a human that didn't ask for any of this. I can’t help that my blood is useful to shifters. And yet, you treat me like… Well, like dog shit.”
"I can't help you're a Silver, doll. It automatically makes you a target, whether you like it or not. I won't say more."
"That's notfair." She felt like a child for saying that—dramatically holding her hands out—but it still felt true all the same. She was dangerously close to mentally unraveling. "I want answers! You’re treating me like trash, and I don’t even know why! My whole life, ruined, for, for—see, I don’t even know why! I don’t even know what being a Silver will do for these shifters, and now the hunters want me? To the point of injury and evenrape? What did the hunters plan to do with me? Whom are you working for? Are you like a random group of hunters, or is all of Crowley looking for women like me?"
Rem panted, proud of herself for not crying when she desperately wanted to. The hunter breathed slowly, watching her while adjusting his sitting position, the sun’s rays moving over his face through the leaves.
The hunter looked tired, like a man awaiting death. Perhaps that’s how she looked in that moment, too. "You don't get to write what is and is not fair. Silvers are more powerful than they know, ‘specially ones like you. Your queen knows that. That’s why you're going to Scarlet Howl to meet her.
